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The September edition of the monthly food demand survey (FooDS) is now out. In this post, I want to draw attention to two questions we added this time around which were suggested by my colleague Bailey Norwood.

We asked a yes/no question:

Can
you think of a time when you felt that you lost trust in the food system?”

The good news that about 60% said "no" but that also means that, unfortunately, about 40% said "yes."

For those people who said
“yes”, we followed up with an open ended question:

Can you describe the exact
circumstances that led to the loss in trust in the food system?

413 people typed responses. I had a lot of fun reading through all the responses and trying to make sense of them. The first thing I did a simple keyword search.

Below is the frequency of occurrence of different keywords among the responses, which I placed into different categories.

Some of the main keywords
mentioned were: GMOs (24), Mad Cow (24),
recall (23), e coli (22), and price (20). When you add the word "genetic" to "GMO" these two combined got a total of 34 mentions, by far the highest. Biotechnology seems to be a big contributor to lost of trust in the food system. That said (and as will be see momentarily), I think most of the statements people typed had something to do with food safety issues. Here is the count of the number of times different words were mentioned.

“I've never reallly had any trust in the food sys. I feel
that the gov't and certain officals have a vested stake in the food industry
and therefore can't be trusted to make decisions in the best interest of
American citzens.”

“$6/lbs for bacon this is out of control”

“McDonalds food and realizing Monsanto owns EVERYTHING”

“The cost of staples like rice, flour and cooking oil. These
items should be much cheaper to buy in bulk than they currently are. It's
disappointing.”

Personal experience (mostly stories of food poisoning) (34
responses)

“I got food poisoning from a Mexican restaurant”

“My husband and I went out to eat at a restaurant, and the
chicken he ate ended up being bad. He got food poisioning and was in the ER
overnight with vomitting and dirrahea constantly. It was the worst thing ever!”

“found some hair in canned food”

“Had a blizzard and our grocery store had empty shelves
after one day. Scary”

Animal Welfare Issues (25 responses)

“About 40 years ago when i visited cattle and chicken
farms, I was shocked at how the animals
were treated and the filthy conditions that they lived under. haven't eatent meat since.

“Especially hate the way they raise chickens.”

“When I found out the actual
conditions of factory farms.”

General media (15 responses)

“I saw the documentary called "Food, Inc."”

“I saw the movie, I
forget what it is called, but it showed the farm process and the uncleanliness
of the system. It made me lose hope in all the farms across the U.S. and
question them.”

“an article in the
media”

Health or Nutritional Issues (10 responses)

“Food that is healthy and safe is more expensive than food
that is unhealthy and questionable so those who are stuck on a budget have to
eat sodium packed food low in nutrients for a cheaper meal i.e. ramen,
hamburger helper etc.”

“Nothing really
tasted right as the time nor was anything really healthy.”

“The love In making the food is gone they dnt make food with
love anymore”

“watched the
documentary: food inc. or something like that. Just showed of how genetically
modified food was used in the production of food. / /
Also the documentary about McDonalds. It is a little old, but still the same
thing applies. I have since cut fast food to a minimum... “

“Also when farmers or workers in the farm are not paid what
they deserve”

“When I found out
that horse meat was being substituted for beef in some cases.”

Interesting or curious responses

“i read how they use
chemical to breed their animals.”

“When I first heard
about the brain found in the chicken at KFC”

“Finding out that I
am 25 years old, perfectly healthy, but (highly likely) due to the GMO's in
foods I had been eating, I am infertile.”

“My dad became
severely allergic to chicken, so we only purchased "organic"
chicken. Some places claim being
organic, but he was still affected by it! Only from local, organic places did
we find chicken that didn't cause him to break out into hives”